


Submit

by IrreWilderer



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, NSFW, Smut, Solas Secret Santa, art?, halamshiral shennanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 12:23:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5456420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IrreWilderer/pseuds/IrreWilderer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taethath and Solas share a private moment in Halamshiral's art gallery.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Submit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lettuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lettuchi/gifts).



The elaborate frame of silver was set like a halo about Taethath’s head as she stood before the painting. Considering the piece’s details in silent thought, she herself had become a part of the Winter Palace’s gallery display: a tall statue of moon-coloured marble sculpted to refined, sharp features. Solas approached from behind, and was charmed by the juxtaposition of the frame around her head giving the appearance of starlight wings crowning her hair. The sophisticated ornamentation of the evening’s earlier events had been done away with, and now her locks were a river of silk falling free in a raven’s veil down her back.

Solas’s walk was far from a serving-man’s step. His heavy heels found the ground in purposeful strides which echoed to the ceiling. Perhaps it was the glasses of sweet spirits which so animated his mood; he had, after all, sipped enough Orlesian tipples to topple even the sturdiest, most seasoned alcoholic. But maybe it was the old game, and this seemed much more likely. There was something familiar at work in the Winter Palace. Familiarity breeds comfort like fire in the belly. And while memories of ages passed often left Solas cold and exhausted, tonight he burned with awareness as bright as ever.

What had transpired in the last few hours _should_ have left him bitter. Intrigue, lies, sex, masks and murder: had there been a thousand more deaths of innocent slaves, Solas would have sworn, perhaps generously, that he spied the Evanuris as they schemed while swimming in ill-gotten luxury. However, in securing the power of Briala’s eluvian, he had advantage where he had before lacked, and this was the source of Solas’s spring of optimism. Where he had failed spectacularly in ages passed, now things were coming together slowly and subtlety, but surely and promising. Solas had earned some moments of respite, so naturally he sought Taethath’s company.

She did not stir as he approached, but she was aware of him. There was something of the woman’s spirit which often whispered to Solas in both a playful warning and a powerful beckoning. He always knew when she was near, and Solas assumed it was the same for her.

Coming to her side, he inspected the display. Despite the painting being a thing of careful technique, Solas liked little save the palette, and considered some shades of green he thought were interesting. Hidden away in a corner, the dark room and flickering of candles’ light did more for the artist’s choice in subject matter than his own stokes across the canvas.

“A fitting image for scrutiny,” the male observed lightly. “Tonight it seems almost a mirror image of events.”

With the slightest pique of her clear brow Taethath watched him patiently, awaiting clarification. Solas, in turn, gave his attention to her completely, already uninterested in the painting when he had his lover to look at.

“It is the elves being decimated by human forces, Solas,” Taethath said to spur his explanation.

“Yes,” Solas conceded. His own light, merry tone was not lost on him. “However, just as a mirror reflects what one sees, the glass distorts it, reversing the image. You raise your left hand, it appears to be the right.”

Taethath tilted her head then looked back to the piece. She was not a creature given to excessive facial expressions, and this suited the Inquisitor well when handling dignitaries or politicians whom she dealt with deftly. Yet at the moment there was the slightest hint of amusement in her eyes, and Solas considered it another victory of the evening.

“You are more abstract than usual,” Taethath observed suggestively. “Perhaps it’s the wine?”

“Hardly,” Solas replied, smirking. “I merely see a powerful elven woman who has laid waste to the Orlesian court with her wit and charm.”

Taethath shook her head, but continued smiling at the corners of her dark eyes. “You went a long way for a compliment.”

“Yet the journey was worth it.”

Reaching out, the backs of Solas’s fingers brushed softly over Taethath’s arm. He took to admiring the long, flowing gown falling from her limbs: black batiste in layers bound by silver embroidery about the sleeves. Folding her up in midnight, holding her above all over things in beauty, Solas observed these specifics and suddenly wished for a change of scenery. “Walk with me,” he implored.

While Taethath’s slender fingers knitted at her waist as they went, one of Solas’s hands rested on the small of her back. He did not guide her; he merely sought to gain the warmth of her skin from beneath her light, sheer garment. Were he steering her, of course, the male would certainly have had some ideas as to their destination. He wished terribly the walls of the Winter Palace could just fall away and reveal a nest of intimacy for them to bed in. His good mood was sending the blood in his veins to places other than his rosy cheeks, and Solas knew it, felt it, as his finely sewn dress suit started to strain about his crotch.

They walked in silence as comfortable as sateen bed sheets through the gallery of elaborate pillars and ancient paintings. Upon approaching the south exit, there was a bit of quiet commotion behind them. The north door opened and then closed heavily, heralding some newcomers. They were two in number; Orlesian youths dressed finely for the evening in all sorts of frills and flounces. Once they had found the middle of the gallery, however, they seemed hardly to be of the same party.

Taethath’s attention was absorbed in their actions which seemed to belay communication, despite the fact that they were silent and far apart. The young man and woman, oblivious of their elven observers, were in a dance which Solas was familiar with, as far as his knowledge of Orlesian custom concerning secret lovers went. Where he was left puzzle, it was possible to guess the rest.

The young woman dragged a finger across her bottom lip, turned her back to the boy, tilted her head, and played with a pink ribbon about her throat. The young man, with one hand crooked behind his back, walked about and imitated looking at the art, though often his eyes fell back at her. It appeared ludicrous, their accentuated actions and dramatic airs belonging better to actors on a stage. Had there been a crowd of people, their movements might have seemed less strange, and Taethath felt as much.

“I understand the use of gestures,” she whispered quietly, leaning into Solas’s ear as she spoke. “Or, at least, I can appreciate its place. But how can privacy still allow them so little freedom? They’re alone in here, and yet they continue to act.”

“You’ll find not one of us is free within the Winter Palace,” Solas mused. Exhilarated by her sudden closeness, he neared enough that her back became flush against his chest. She smelled softly of vetiver, cedar trees and his tiring, tenuous restraint. “The Empress is imprisoned by the whims of the people. The people are shackled to traditions both weak and fickle as cracked glass. Guests, as you’ve seen, become bound to foreign ceremony like conscripts to their customs. And the servants? They might enjoy some social flexibilities which these two lack, but that is where their privilege ends.”

Solas glimpsed again at the two Orlesian youths with their practiced coquetry and dead decorum. It was a dance which had moved many through the ages, whether in graceful steps or to thorough exhaustion.

“We are all slaves to a system of gestures and subtlety when under the scrutiny of a broken system,” he said in completing his thought. He was distracted, however, by every curve of Taethath body up against his. She was as much fire as her magic, and it felt like flames were curling from her, causing him to sweat.

“I would be no slave,” Taethath stated, eyes raking over the pretending couple.

“Nor would I,” Solas bowed his head in agreement. Stirred by her refusal to yield, he smoothed his lips across the pique of her ear, more ready than ever to surrender to her strength of character and tempting form. Grazing back and forth so softly, he bent to kiss down the column of her neck and breathed his confession across her porcelain shoulders. “But I know who I would submit to.”

When Solas’s right hand wrapped around to rest on her stomach, Taethath’s fingers knitted with them. Suddenly they were swept up in trading bold kisses as the male wrenched her closer. Taethath titled her head up to allowed Solas’s better access to her mouth, and he bruised into her with frenzied, fierce passion. His tongue darted out to lick her lips as she sucked on his, teasing them to tortured, reddened plumpness. His right hand still clutched hers in tenderness, but his left moved to her breast. Cupping the supple flesh through her dress and squeezing softly, Solas felt for her nipple and tugged between his fingers. Taethath moaned loudly, twitched, and ground her buttocks into the hard line of his cock. The sudden, blinding friction brought the blood in Solas’s veins to boiling, and–

The female Orlesian’s gasp was outraged enough to clear the heady haze Solas and Taethath had stumbled into. Both looked up from behind heavy eyelids and saw the humans leaving in hurried, embarrassed steps.

“Do you think they were surprised because they weren’t alone?” Taethath asked innocently through heaving gasps. Her free hand reached around and pawed for Solas’s clothed length, and her tone deepened with seduction. “Or because they saw two wild, savage elves in the shadows?”

Gripping her by the upper arms, pushing her hard against the gallery wall, Solas took his lover’s suggestion of savagery to heart.

He taunted her neck with his teeth; biting, nipping, and then rewarded the pinched marks with little licks from the tip of his tongue, leaving trails to cool and send sparks of need to Taethath’s womanhood. Pulling the length of her dress up, Solas felt his way passed simple undergarments for the nest of warmth between his lover’s legs, and groaned with lust and sodden triumph as his fingers dipped into wet welcoming. Taethath gripped at his shoulders, hit her head back against the wall, and lifted one leg, humming quietly in beautiful gratitude as Solas skimmed over her silky opening. Just hearing the female’s repressed squeals and sighs was return enough, and yet they were no where near the symphony Solas wished to hear pealing passed her lips.

He smoothed his long, two first fingers between her folds, and groaned approvingly at such heat which was only found here and the tightness it promised for later. When buried to the knuckle, Solas thumbed softly in circles at her clit. It was so slight that the breeze might have done more to entice her towards ecstasy. Taethath jerked her hips impatiently, made a small, unappreciative sound, and elicited a thick chuckle from her lover’s throat. Turning to pressure more persistent, Solas insisted on the bud with steady pressing which matched the speed in which he wriggled the fingers inside. Stretching her entrance, he added one more finger, and turned to thrusting slow and full, making sure to lavish ever nerve along her cunt until Taethath’s lifted leg was quivering and her palms were kneading hungrily over her own breasts.

The sight of this had Solas staring in spell-bound fascination at hardened nipples hidden behind silky black material and worked at by nimble fingers. This intimate image soon had Solas working at his trousers and Taethath’s watching in silent, commanding approval as she sighed and hiccuped, feeling nothing but the drumming beating bold and painfully between her legs. When the material folded at his ankles, Solas yanked Taethath’s elevated knee up until her five, little toes were clenching past his ear.

“Did you not say you would submit to me?” Taethath asked playfully, her voice all heavy and hitching gasps.

Solas peered down to his member glistening with precum hovering less than an inch away from her reddened core. He laughed a little around his hard breathing, the sight of awaiting completion taunting him.

“I did,” Solas nodded. He looked to her face, and found stars sparking with need against the vaulted sky of her black eyes. “I would submit. So tell me, vhenan,” and he moved closer, the tip of his cock just touching to her womanhood ready to swallow, “how hard you want this. Tell me how much you crave it.”

Taethath smiled at this perversion of the definition of ‘submit’ and taking orders, though the smile was hard kept as Solas eased in so slightly, parted her so perfectly, and then retracted.

“If you think I’ll beg, you are wrong, Solas,” Taethath growled, biting her bottom lip obstinately. No matter how long he teased and tortured, hers was a will that would never break.

Solas stole that pouting bottom lip between his own as he crashed into her, filling her fully while mumbling gratitude against her mouth. Praise and thanks, a hundred apologies, he could never express enough even while kissing her hungrily and taking her hard with the concession she gave like a queen.

Hips working in desperate, successive thrusts, Solas sought the perfume caught up in her hair as he swirled his hips and alternated just how deeply he bore to Taethath’s core. Deep, dark forests at midnight, wet with rain, smells of damp birch bark; this, along with the thick smell of sex, enveloped Solas as he kissed through her hair. Taethath wasn’t simply a woman, or a being. She seemed a time and place for him to seek, and as he felt their arrivals approaching, Solas mourned already the loss of the road to get there.

He felt her grip him greedily in quiet, quaking trembling. Taethath was clenching at her cunt, and then at her eyes as the warmth began to wash out to her limbs, which then returned like a tide of craving.

“Solas, I…”

Solas felt as she felt, as surely as any lovers in the time of ancient Arlathan had felt. Just as she tried to hold on to the feeling of lightness in her body and heaviness in her core, Solas attempted to stay just a little longer at the threshold of pleasure to watch Taethath look at him so lovingly.

Without warning, however, Taethath rocked her hips against him in a sudden thrust, and Solas’s eyes widened. This unexpected friction and force sent him over the edge. Solas cried out, gripped harder at the leg over his shoulder, and felt all vision fail as bliss shook him thoroughly. Hardly able to keep up on his legs by the orgasm which rocked through him, he fell into Taethath, who writhed against the wall as she too shuttered and twitched to her end, her one alabaster hand splaying out against the wall and becoming lost in the white plaster.

They allowed themselves a short minuet of holding each other before moving to task. 

Taethath had only to let her dress fall back to the floor, but Solas had his trousers to buckle and tend. Watching him while combing her fingers through her hair, Taethath couldn’t help but comment.

“Publicly in the Winter Palace’s gallery?” she observed while resuming her stately posture. “It was the wine, wasn’t it?”

“Had it been the wine, I may have preformed less publicly, and more likely not at all.” Solas flashed her a smirk as he finished putting his outfit back into place.

“Well, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself,” Taethath said happily, taking his offered arm as they walked towards the exit.

“I would prefer to continue enjoying you,” Solas admitted. “And, perhaps, the wine.”

“I’ll have a bottle brought up,” Taethath suggested.

They walked to the Inquisitor’s room quietly.

**Author's Note:**

> A gift for the Solas Secret Santa. I HAD SO MUCH FUN WITH THIS (right after I got over my writer's block, heh). The Lavellan character belongs to moon-faced-pear-shaped on tumblr.


End file.
